Elfleda ignores the omens

Elfleda heard the chickens clucking and flapping, scattering into the bushes as Egelric came into the yard. He’d been out a long while. Had missed dinner, as he’d said he might. She’d already decided this was a bad sign.

Elfleda kept her back to the door and gave her spindle another whirl. She spun out a length of thread and held it up before the sunny window. Flawless. No one would guess how her hands had shaken this day.

Egelric was close enough now to be heard tromping up the path. Elfleda spun her spindle in the sunlight and watched it spin and spin and spin.

Egelric flung open the door and banged it shut behind him. His excitement swept through the room like a gust of wind.

“Drop the distaff, girlie!” he cried. “Your work is done for the day!”

Elfleda caught her spindle and turned. He looked as gleeful as a boy granted an unexpected holiday at the fair. Only he was not a boy, he was her husband. And the holiday at the fair was really the entire rest of their lives spent far from everything they knew.

He held up a couple brace of pigeons like a prize. “For supper, since I missed dinner. A pigeon pie!”

Elfleda carefully wound her thread about the spindle and laid her spinning in the basket with the wool. Pigeon pie was a feast day luxury. Also her favorite food. Had he guessed she still needed to be wooed?

“That looks less like pie and more like pigeons,” she said dryly. “I thought you said my work was done for the day.”

Egelric only laughed. Elfleda had not seen her staid and solemn husband so full of boyish delight since their wedding day. Or no, rather not since the first time she’d told him she was expecting a baby. The second time he’d been more cautious with his rejoicing. If it happened a third time she’d decided she wouldn’t say anything to him at all.

“Never mind, then,” he said. “We’ll have pie tomorrow and cold beans tonight. I won’t taste a thing anyway.”

He tried to slip an arm around her waist as she passed, but she took care to keep the bench between them, and she swiped one pair of pigeons from his hand. Two dead birds yoked together at the neck by a string. A bad omen. She would not think of it.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I’ll make the pie in time for supper. I could hardly eat a bite at dinner time.”

“Poor girlie. Worried, were you? It all worked out, you know.”

She smiled, finally, but by now her face was to the wall as she hung the pigeons on a peg. “I guessed.”

“It all happened so fast,” he said dazedly. “I still can’t believe it. I already swore my oath to him. I didn’t think it would all happen today. I didn’t even dress up.”

Elfleda choked out a quavering laugh at the idea of her husband voluntarily “dressing up” for anything. She reached back, and Egelric dutifully handed her the second pair of birds.

“I wish you’d been there, Leda,” he said, a soft plea in his voice. “You would have been proud.”

“I couldn’t be prouder.”

“Mean that?”

“Of course I do. Doesn’t surprise me one bit if he took one look at you and decided he had to have you. It’s what I did, didn’t I?”

Egelric laughed, and this laugh wasn’t the weirdly boyish laugh he’d come home with, but the deep, close-​lipped chuckling she knew well. Her heart fluttered like a snared bird.

She turned and saw him standing there, hands on his hips, his broad body blocking her route back into the room. She could go around the other side of the table, but if he saw her try it, he might just dash around and catch her. The fluttering moved lower, closer to her womb.

“I’m only surprised he didn’t make you a duke or a prince or something,” she said, a little breathlessly. “You’re a prince to me.”

Egelric quirked his thin mouth and leaned closer.

“A h-​handsome prince,” she said shakily.

“Ach!”

Egelric leapt at her, but she’d asked for it, and she feinted away, giggling. She crouched low to the floor to grab an empty bucket and swung it around behind her as a shield.

“Now I know you’re funning!” he said, looming over her, trapping her in the corner. “You said handsome!”

Elfleda swung the bucket on its handle till it rattled. “And you forgot to fetch the water this morning!”

Egelric smacked his forehead. “I’m lucky I didn’t forget my own name this morning.”

He took the bucket with one hand and pulled her up with the other. The mere clasp of his big hand around hers was enough to weaken her knees, but he had a job to do now, and there would be no fooling around until he’d finished. That was Egelric.

“Be right back,” he announced. “I’m off to fetch my first drink of water as a free man!”

He went out, merrily swinging the bucket. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d broken into a cheery song, though it would have been the first time.

“And don’t forget to wash up!” she called after him.

Elfleda straightened her skirts, smoothed her hair, and walked back into the center of the cottage. It was a fine house. Bright and airy, and half built of stone where it was set into the side of the hill. The floor was smooth, swept of scraps, and almost perfectly even. The walls had been replastered only last summer.

And even as she paced from table to bed curtain and back, Elfleda brushed a wisp of wool off a cushion, straightened the bench, and plucked a dead leaf off the plant by the window. Her house was fresh and tidy, just as she liked it. Everything in its place. No one would guess what turmoil churned in the breast of the woman who kept it.

She heard Egelric returning from the well, his clumping step a little uneven now that he was weighted on one side by the bucket. Elfleda smoothed her hands back over her face and found her cheeks damp with sweat. Her heart refused to grow calm.

Egelric came in, still dripping down into his collar from his washing. He gave his full attention to the water level in the bucket, for he knew how she disliked splatters.

“How was the drink?” she asked.

The bucket thunked on the dirt floor. “Sweet,” he said in a strange voice, still stooped over.

He stood up and dried his face on one of her dishtowels. “I tried making a wish at the well,” he said through the folds. “But that damned elf threw the penny back at me! Called me cheeky for making another wish today when my biggest wish just came true.”

He faltered as he came towards her, wincing in his stride as if he’d just stepped on a thorn. But of course the floor was swept bare, and she knew he’d only realized he’d blundered. It appeared they’d not had the same biggest wish.

Egelric plucked a single sprig from her bouquet of lilies of the valley and twirled it beneath her nose in an awkward apology. They did not know how to talk about these things. They might as well have spoken different languages when they tried.

The flowers tickled her lips, and Egelric’s knuckles brushed her chin. In spite of the sickly sweet scent of the flowers, Elfleda could almost taste the salt-​and-​limestone tang of his freshly washed skin. Like a deer, she yearned to stick out her tongue and lick. Instead she took the sprig away so he would lower his hand.

“But there’ll be other elves in the valley,” he promised her. “Feisty ones, since they’ve had the run of the place for a hundred years. But their bags will be bursting with wishes.”

Elfleda did not want to talk about that. “So tell me what happened.”

Egelric broke into another grin. “You were right, as usual! Gifmund didn’t want to let me go. He raved and ranted, but he isn’t baron yet. His father was more interested in the silver than in the fun of crushing my hopes. I didn’t hear how much money it was, but it looked like a lot.”

He paused and chewed on his lip. Elfleda straightened his damp collar and evened out the laces.

“You’re worth it,” she assured him.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him, belly to belly and breast to breast.

He asked her, “How long before I stop fearing he’s going to realize his mistake and change his mind?”

“Tsk!”

“Maybe never,” he said softly. “It’s been three years and I’m still afraid you’re going to come to your senses and go home to your mother.”

Elfleda tensed. She had tried to reassure herself with that very thought this morning: If her husband went down into the valley, she could always go live with her mother. For the first time in three years she’d actually considered leaving him.

Had he guessed somehow? Had he known she would? After three years of marriage she was still in the dark, still feeling her way around his contours, only guessing at his depths. He drank in things with his father’s sad brown eyes that his mother’s tight-​lipped mouth would never let him say.

She pressed her cheek against his neck and whispered, “Never.”

He tightened his arms around her and kissed all the skin he could reach: her ear, her neck, her temple. Then he tipped her back, and cling as she might, her head fell back and he cradled it in his big hand.

She closed her eyes, certain he was about to kiss her. Her stomach was all knotted up with yearning and dread. But after a moment of nothing more than his breath on her face, she opened her eyes again.

He was looking at her with that look—that slightly befuddled, slightly awed expression, as if he’d just seen something that had made him stop in the middle of a sentence and forget everything he’d meant to say. Elfleda knew she was a plain sort of woman, with her long, straight nose, her horrid freckles, and her orange hair, but she could feel almost beautiful when he looked at her in that way.

She wondered suddenly whether she ever gave him the same impression. Funning aside, she knew she ought to consider him unattractive. He was far from handsome in any ordinary sense. But he wasn’t ugly in the ordinary way either; his ugliness wasn’t that of weak chins, pasty skin, bulging eyes, and flat faces. He was rough-​hewn and bristly and magnificent, and when he looked at her like that, her mouth fell open, her limbs fell slack, and her womb seemed to sink in her belly, heavy and florid as a setting sun.

Then he did kiss her. But it only was a chaste, gentle kiss to the lips, and afterwards, when he opened his eyes and stared down at her, his look was simply a frown of concern.

“What did you eat for dinner?” he asked. “You’re white as a slug belly.”

“I had some bread and cheese…”

He replied with a skeptical grunt. “Forget about the pigeons for today. I’ll run down to the village and get us some pasties later.”

He stooped and swept his arm down her thighs, lifting her up to drape her neatly across his lap as he thumped down onto the cushioned bench. The bench creaked as he settled in.

“They even have a farm picked out for us already,” he said once they were cozy. “A full hide of land north of the river, well-​drained and on a south-​facing slope. And every inch of it arable! We’ll be up to our ears in wheat and barley!”

Elfleda put on a smile.

“And guess who our nearest neighbors will be. Remember Alwy Hogge? The natural?”

“He’s not a natural,” Elfleda said distractedly. “He hit his head as a child.”

“Anyway. You knew him growing up, didn’t you?”

Elfleda combed Egelric’s hair out of his collar with her fingers and tried to straighten his shirt. “We lived closer to his wife’s family.”

Egelric frowned in concentration. “Who’d he marry again? Didn’t he marry one of Eglaf Ethelsson’s daughters? The youngest one got in trouble with him, I thought.”

“Yes, Gunnilda,” Elfleda said huskily.

She was a little surprised he hadn’t known. She was, in fact, a little surprised that none of Eglaf Ethelsson’s elder daughters had “gotten in trouble” with Egelric himself, since he used to prowl around that farm. No girl had ever gotten in trouble with Egelric, so far as she knew. Maybe her own difficulties conceiving and carrying a child had nothing to do with her.

“Well, I hope you liked her,” he said, “because she’ll be your nearest neighbor. I’m glad about Alwy. He’s not much for conversation, but then neither am I. And he’s a hard worker.”

“Just like you.”

Egelric cuddled her closer and rocked her on his lap.

“We’ll get along fine, fine,” he said dreamily. “Leda, I was thinking of buying a span of oxen and taking them down into the valley. I can get a head-​start with the plowing, and I can rent them out when I’m working on the house.”

Elfleda could not fathom all the changes in her life since Egelric had met this so-​called king yesterday afternoon. Pigeon pies, a day without work, and now a pair of oxen?

“Can we afford that?” she asked weakly.

“I have enough saved, I reckon.”

Elfleda let out a wounded cry before she could stop herself. Egelric frowned and shifted her on his lap.

“What’s this now, girlie?”

It was stupid of her, but Elfleda burst into tears. “Oh, I don’t know,” she whimpered. “You were saving that money to buy your own freedom!”

“And now I don’t need to buy it because it’s already mine. You weren’t hoping I’d use it to buy you some pretty dresses now, were you?”

“No! Oh, don’t be stupid! But you were almost there! And then you wouldn’t have been beholden to anyone!”

Egelric rocked her back and forth on his lap, his patience unruffled. “Ach, were you thinking I’d have enough to buy my own kingdom? Every man has a lord, girlie. I still would have been beholden to some man. And better Sigefrith than Gifmund. If the Baron had died before I’d paid my fee, what then? Gifmund never would have accepted it. He would have found some reason to fine me and just taken it away, and then where would we be? Sigefrith gave me my freedom, and he gave me a farm, too, and asks nothing more than that I work it.”

Elfleda lay limp against him, sick with dread. Her head lolled against his shoulder. Her face was turned straight at the sight of four dead pigeons strung up by their necks.

“He’ll make you pay someday,” she whispered. “He’ll make you pay.”

Egelric shrugged and humphed, finally growing annoyed. “You’ve not met him, Leda. He’s a good man, and he means none of us any ill, which is a pleasant change, let me tell you. I think we could be very happy there. Won’t you try?”

He leaned her back until her head slipped off his shoulder and he could look her in the face. Once he did, his stern expression rearranged itself into a bristly-​browed frown of sympathy.

“You’re sad to leave your home, aren’t you, girlie?”

Elfleda nodded.

“And you’re going to miss your mother, too. I’m sorry about that. You can tell her she’s welcome to come live with us. She always has been. At least since my mother died.”

Elfleda smiled ruefully and roused herself enough to wipe away some of her tears with her sleeve. “You know she never will.”

“Not even now that I am an upstanding subject of His Majesty the King?” Egelric teased.

Elfleda sucked some of the drippy wetness off her upper lip and smiled in spite of herself. He was at his most irresistible: his low voice rumbling; his grim, rugged face softened by affection and desire; and his mother’s tight-​lipped mouth unclosing itself long enough to say words like “you’re sad” and “you’re going to miss” and “I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes and kissed her. It was another chaste, gentle kiss, but the salty taste of her own tears in her mouth made her ravenous for his skin. She pulled his head down and kissed him hard.

Inside she was in a turmoil, but she let her body have its way. No matter how careful she tried to be, he always brought her to this: this big, ugly, taciturn, unkempt man had given her no peace since the first time she’d danced with him and felt the heat of his body warming the watery chill in hers.

There would be no pigeon pie and probably no pasties, either. There would be no more work today. He would carry her behind the snow-​white curtain to their bed and make love to her until they were both sweaty and sticky and half the blankets were dragging on the dusty floor. And maybe his seed would find root again, and she would have to endure unbearable hope and fear and despair for the third time, only this time she would be far from her mother, and far from her perfect, tidy home.

But she would go with him. She always followed wherever he led, ever since the first time she’d danced with him, torn between yearning and dread.